O My Sociopath
by Late March
Summary: A completed re-write of Big Smile Please. The story of the Joker's obsessed relationship with a target named Katherine that proves more than vaguely interesting... Joker/OFC, although it's not particularly romantic. At all.
1. The World's A Stage

"O My Sociopath"

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I wrote this a few years ago, when _The Dark Knight_ first came out in theaters, and now that it's sequel has finally been released, I decided to go over each chapter and update it to fit more with my current writing abilities. I think it fits rather nicely into the interim between the end of _The Dark Knight_ and the beginning if _The Dark Knight Rises_, especially since they imply that the Batman abandoned the city for some time, and we know nothing about the Joker's fate beyond his capture.

You can find the original version on my profile - titled Big Smile Please - it is unfinished, whereas this version IS FINISHED! (cheers) So please tell me what you think - I'd really appreciate it! Thanks guys!

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**Chapter One  
**"**The World's a Stage"  
****Theme: "Psycho Killer" by The Talking Heads**

Katherine was walking home after work one day, alone, when her life changed. The night was dark enough to spook her into carrying her keys in her hand and her umbrella in the other, like a club. Every movement in the shadows scared her, frightened her, and sharpened her paranoia until it made her heart race with nerves.

Anything out of place was enough to set her alarms off: a sewer rat, hungry and greedy, scurrying down one of Gotham's many alleys; a drunk kicking an empty beer can; the weakly flickering lights of a far away bar. Even a flash of the half-spent moon in a puddle caught her eye in the wrong way, a spook in the night.

Anything that seemed out of place.

'_Hello.'_ She thought as her feet halted without permission, backing up until she once again stood in front of the dingy, grimy side street she passed each night on her way home. Was that a body?

Well, in Gotham, that wasn't so unlikely.

Carefully, Katherine inched her way forward, fingers tightening around her keys until her knuckles were white. A lone halo of light from a streetlamp, the only illumination in the alley, at once hid and revealed the body. Upon even closer advance, her heart began to beat in her chest, a rapid, dangerous tattoo against the ribs and chest cavity. Her lungs expanded in quicker succession, in sync with the tempo of the rising anxiety that was pushing her pulse.

What if it _was_ a dead body? What was she supposed to do if it was – stand there staring at some gory wound, a shattered face or ripped open chest, until the police arrived? It certainly _looked_ like a dead body. It, they, weren't moving, moaning, calling for help. And that was usually a sign of some permanent demise, right?

Katherine paused as another thought came to mind. Maybe it was a robber, just waiting for someone to come and investigate the sight of a 'victim' so that he could murder _them_. A far-fetched theory in another town, for sure, but Gotham was the city of theatrical crime. She hefted her umbrella high as makeshift weapon, just to be sure.

"Sir?" She called out apprehensively, wondering how much of a fool she was making of herself. Her nervous brain imagined a twitch of the hand, shudder in the face. There was no other movement, and so she convinced herself it was a trick of the light. Katherine immediately resolved to stop watching so many movies that involved zombies. "Are you alright, sir?"

There was still no answer. Still, they didn't move, even as she got closer and closer to them. Finally, she whispered, "Sir?" And then poked him – it was definitely a _him_, she could see now – in the ribs with the end of her umbrella.

No response.

Stashing her keys in her purse, Katherine took the time to study the man on the ground. _'It's not like he's going anywhere. I can always call the police in a moment.'_ She pushed off all warning signs of danger with the rationalization. If every other Gothamite could have a healthy curiosity for the morbid, why couldn't she?

Whatever it was that pushed her to stare – curiosity, disgust, horror – she couldn't take her eyes from him, the strange victim. He was the most eccentric, uncanny character she'd ever seen. He was the strangest looking man she'd ever seen – a clown gone sour was her first thought – someone that Batman would fight, if he ever again returned to the mean streets of Gotham.

Still, the man looked like something out of a comic book. His clothes, sullied by blood, were clownish by design and by aim. Dark brown trousers that were slightly too short, showing off bright, striped, argyle socks. A bright purple vest that was really a dark shade of violet, buttoned up over a long torso and a green shirt with an entrancing geometric pattern. The sleeves were rolled up pale arms to the elbows, and the attached hands had ripped up nails and blue collar calluses.

The man's face only added to the picture. His head was a bright green, the color of new grass, and she wondered where he had gotten the hair dye for such a vivid color in such a dreary city. His face was covered in white costume make-up, uneven and badly applied, with a thousand little black creases traveling out from the eyes.

The eyes were swallowed in black eyeliner and face paint, and his lips… They seemed to be smothered in a lady's bright, red lipstick. Cadillac red. The sanguinary face paint stretched up his face in slowly curling lines, one from each corner of his mouth. Up and up, they reached so that his lips looked wide, and altogether unwieldy on his face.

Katherine studied him for a long time, and wondered if this had all been done to him after death. If so, it was an extremely cruel thing to do; it was clear to her that once, the man could have been handsome, extremely attractive. But the make-up and some horrible emotion etched in the lines, ruined that.

As she kneeled down next to him, a drop of rain, a single and solitary one, fell from the sky and slid down the man's cold cheek. It slithered over his curvature, revealing one sliver of normally colored skin.

Her eyes were glued to that strip of skin – the contrast between skin and white make-up was so great as to be mesmerizing. He would look so much better if he was cleaned off, and Katherine was sure it would be easier for his family to view his body if he wasn't covered in unpleasant ick.

Slowly, she reached into her purse and pulled out a bag of small tissues. Dipping the tips in a nearby puddle, Katherine placed them on his nose and swiped downward, revealing centimeter after centimeter of clean, human skin. She wiped at his cheek, running it down past his jaw line and halfway down his neck.

She went through five more tissues in the process of gently cleaning the man's face off. When she finished the cleansing, she sucked in a deep breath filled with pity.

It wasn't just red lipstick that slit his face high on either side – it was scars too. Long and jagged, like they'd been done by a broken bottle or a shaky hand. Somehow, despite the fact they were definitively flesh colored, they were somehow more horrific than the red smile.

'_How terrible.'_ Katherine's mind balked at trying to figure out how this had happened to him. She ran a fingertip over one, and up and down the length of his cheek, when she felt someone watching her.

She looked up to see his eyes – open – and staring at her. They were beautiful eyes, a deep, intense green that would have been stunning, if only they didn't completely lack warmth and compassion.

The man sat up, aggressively and suddenly in her personal space until he spotted a soiled tissue and pushed her away. The tell-tale red stain on many of them told him exactly what she'd done, as if her own guilty look wasn't proof enough. He scrambled to his feet, sliding around on the wet cement, his movements lanky and jittery. Katherine followed suit, jumping to her feet, not wanting him to have an advantage over her.

Even with both of them standing, he loomed over her, an immense figure, a splattered monolith. Katherine's face contorted in fear, but his melted into a dangerous smile. "My, my, my," He said, a sing-song manner to accompany the gruff tone of his voice. "What a mistake you've made tonight my dear, yes. What a mistake." He licked his still red lips. "I'm going to have fun with you." His laugh was high-pitched, manic.

She screamed.

"All the world's a stage  
And all the men and women merely players  
They have their exits and their entrances  
And one man in his time plays many parts."  
- William Shakespeare, As You Like It

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There you have it! Chapter one of seven! The updated version! Please read and review


	2. And First Destroys Their Mind

"O My Sociopath"

Disclaimer: I do not own the Joker, the Batman, or any other recognizable character trademark to Marvel, Christopher Nolan, etc. I only own Katherine, the words, and the plot.

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Here you go! The second chapter! Please let me know what you think! Please review!

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**Chapter Two  
**"**And First Destroys Their Mind"  
Theme: "When You're Evil" by Voltaire**

Katherine stumbled over a half-crushed soda can three-quarters of the way down the main drag. Darting shadows that slipped from edge to edge, from dumpster to building and back, haunted the corners of her eyes as she ran. Her legs in their tights and pumps and restricting knee-length skirt, struggled to eat up the damp pavement. Her frizzing her bounced limply on her back in the evening mist, and she groaned in determination. Get home. Lock the door. That would stop him.

That _would_ stop him.

Back in the alleyway, the man, Joker, smiled. He licked his lips but grimaced and spit when the taint of his own blood lingered on the inside of his mouth. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand and cracked his knuckles. Curling his fingers into fists, Joker remembered how the woman had done the same thing in a moment when others would have frozen. She had a decent right cross.

He giggled and pondered whether he should tell that to her while he made her cry later that evening. It would make the scene more memorable – something to distinguish it from the others – and dramatics were his specialty. He set out after her and savored the pursuit, glad that she ran.

Katherine whipped around a corner and the knuckle of her right hand grazed the rough brick wall, badly scraping it. She cursed and held it to her chest, purse hanging off of her arm as she tried to stem the blood in her work shirt and run at the same time.

She skidded to a stop in front of a police car that was halted at a stoplight whose red glow was no comfort at all. Her purse, big and bulky, banged on the hood as she leaned onto it, breathing heavily and panting. The officers got out of the car, but stayed behind their doors, wary, and she couldn't blame them. She would have stayed away from a panting, bloody, bruised, crazy woman too. "Please-" She could hardly get a word out between each breath. "Please, you have to help me!"

Her words trailed off as the brightly colored figure of the man called Joker appeared at the end of the street, limbs pumping erratically as he tailed her. He'd smeared more lipstick on, but hadn't bothered with the rest of his face, and the Cadillac red lipstick he wore was especially vibrant as it stretched halfway up his cheeks.

"Son of a bitch!" She exclaimed as the police officers tried to ask her what was going on in guarded voices, but their words were lost on her. She tripped over her feet in her hurry to get away, and left her black work heels lying forlornly on their sides in the street.

Katherine was running again, and she hated running. The police lunged at her, toward the front of her car, but it was too late – she was off, dodging a lone Honda that had turned onto their street, letting out a startled cry when the car honked it's horn at her. A mother exiting her minivan with her child frowned at Katherine, turning the small boy's face away from the spectacle and quickly ushering him into their apartment building.

Her feet, shoeless and now frozen and muddy, couldn't quite gain anymore traction on the concrete, and she went sprawling in the middle of the deserted street. Her head banged on the ground painfully and the world spun in dizzying variations of red, white, and green. When Katherine's head had marginally cleared, she sat up on her knees and put a hand to her head, looking for the clown and praying there wouldn't be much blood.

For a moment there was nothing but silence in the great, dirty city, except for a thin ringing in her ears and the sky of the city, as if the hands of Gotham had reached out to pluck the taught wire of tension running through her body. She couldn't hear the clown, couldn't see him, but Katherine was _not_ foolish enough to believe he'd left her alone now.

Something colorful whizzed past her head, a tornado of energy and malice. For the opposite direction came the Joker's breath on her cheek, hot and hungry. He placed his cold hands flush against her cheeks and held her head in place before she could react and cry out. His much larger body, with her back pressed unwillingly against his chest, was more than enough of a cage to hold the rest of her limbs down. In any case, the waves of emotion – danger, anxiety, sadness, insanity – radiating from his flesh, was more than enough to alert her to his extreme proximity.

"Nice." His graveled voice started as his fingers dug into her cheeks. "Right." Tighter and tighter they pressed down. "Cross." She screamed shrilly as his fingernails broke the skin on her face, drawing blood. His chuckle sounded in her ear, low, throaty, and pleased.

"What do you –"

His hand slapped her cheek lightly before jumping forward and covering her mouth. "Shh, don't… speak. Just… watch."

As soon as the words left his mouth, Katherine spotted something large at the other end of the street. A car. Not a car, an 18-wheeler, a big rig. The headlights blinded her, enlarging her black pupils till they nearly touched the very edge of her eyes.

Its horn blared, a warning to stay out of its way that went entirely unheeded. She began to struggle with the Joker, trying to break his strong hold as her body twisted wildly, the muscles in her arms bulging in their attempt to break free. She fought to push up out of her kneeling position, but it was useless.

Her neck creaked ominously as her head broke free of his hold. Joker swore as her pearly white teeth sunk into the hand that had covered her lips. His grunt of surprise and pain give her little satisfaction, considering the circumstances. Even with such an attempt, he was still strong enough to hold her in place.

By now the big truck was close enough for her to see the driver's eyes, wide with fright and uncertainty as a goon sitting next to him in the passenger seat pointed a gun at his head. "Help me! Please!" She screamed before squeezing her eyes tight, letting the silver grill of the truck be the last thing she saw. Her body tensed in anticipation, waiting for the inevitable moment of impact. He was going to kill them both. Joker was going to kill her right then. The horn blared again, and she dug her fingernails into her captor's thighs and –

Katherine screamed as she was flung to the side without warning; the jolt of their bodies hitting sidewalk was bracingly real. Joker rolled with her, dragging her out of the way of death at the last second possible, laughing at his glorious game. He still did not let go of her.

She latched onto the hope that the truck driver would rebel against his gun-toting supervisor and come to her rescue, unable to risk the usual damsel in distress. He would jump from the cab and call the police, fight off her bright attacker, and she, she would be saved. But the truck crushed that, powering on down the street until it suddenly swerved and powered into the side of a building.

Joker sat up, pulling the woman with him so that they were facing each other. Her eyes were as wide as the truck's huge hubcaps, and she seemed frozen in shock, so he wondered if maybe he had played too high of a card too soon. At this rate, she'd never say yes to a second date.

He placed his hands on her cheeks again, blood on the pads of his gloved fingers, and smiled. "We couldn't have you getting squished, could we?"

Katherine willed herself not to look him in the eyes, to give in to his taught and desire to mess with her mind. Would this be her chance? Maybe. She stared at the ground while he stared at her, the tension of hunter and prey thick between them. His grin gradually faded till his face was as dead as when she'd found him in the alley, thinking of how he was winning at this game already, how much he liked it. Thinking about how this baby of a relationship would only foster his obsession as it grew.

He awoke from his mind because of the sharp pain in his thigh.

His captive took advantage of his surprise and jumped to her feet. The glint of metal in her hand told him she'd dug her keys from her pocket and stabbed him with them. She hadn't pierced him, but the bruise would be deep on the inside of his thigh, like a violent love bite. She'd cut across the street by the time he'd gained his feet. _'Well, if the mouse has claws.'_

Katherine sprinted for all she was worth, for all that she hated running, no matter that her skirt was rucked up her legs – she didn't give a damn what the neighbors saw anymore. Down the street and the next, up the stairs and into her building to finally charge into the lobby and the slowly closing elevator. The new tenant on the third floor looked at her strangely, but she only backed herself into a corner and wrapped her arms around her middle.

The elevator was not the sanctuary of relief that she'd hoped it would be. The ride up to her floor turned out to be brutal instead – at every moment she expected the mad Sclown to pop up from some impossible place and finish his night in heart's blood.

As soon as the doors opened she burst out of them and ran down the hall, not caring that she tripped her cranky, cat-loving neighbor, Mr. Furinball. His yells beat at her back as she fumbled for her keys and unlocked the door with shaky hands.

Katherine slammed it shut and locked it with hands that were pale from shock and lack of oxygen. Her back pressed against the wooden door as she slid down it and sat on the floor, her hair pooling about her in a rumpled mess. "Son of a bitch. Oh god. Oh god. Oh god." She couldn't stop saying the words.

Head in her hands, she tried to push the night away, over an abyss where it would be unreachable and leave her without memory of it. Unsuccessful, with each footstep throbbing in her feet and her cheeks stinging with each tear and scrapes tormenting her body, there could be no hope of forgetting. Switching on the TV, Katherine turned the volume all the way up, blasting it, dismissive of the complaints she would be sure to get from the other apartments.

Joker watched from the ledge of her living room window, his legs folded underneath his body casually. "Don't fight me, little girl." He told her from the outside, enjoying the look within. "I believe whatever doesn't kill you, simply makes you… stranger. It's only too bad that this _will _kill you."

"For those whom God to ruin has designed  
He fits for fate, and first destroys their mind."  
- John Dryden, Fables, The Hind and the Panther (1867), Part III, Line 2387

"When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams – this may be madness. To seek treasure where there is only trash. To much sanity may be madness – and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!"  
- Miguel de Cervantes, Man of La Mancha

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So now I truly would appreciate your reviews! I'd like very much to thank **Zeny** and **Maria Isabell** for reviewing with their kind words! I know that some of you have put this story on your 'Story Alert' List, which is also awesome, but don't forget the power of a review! If you like it enough to read it again, review! Thank you again, and I hope you all enjoy! The next chapter should be up in a few days!


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